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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Behaviour management at the SAS Institute',
	'<{subtitle}>' => 'Written in <span title="Principles of Business Management">BUS 1101</span> of <a href="http://www.uopeople.edu/">University of the People</a>, finalised on 2016-11-23',
	'<{copyright year}>' => '2016',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<p>
	I can&apos;t say that I agree with the way that the SAS Institute makes their money.
	Data mining is a process that disrespects the privacy of your targets.
	In that regard, I cannot condone this company&apos;s actions.
	With that out of the way, let&apos;s discuss the factors that influence work behaviour and this company&apos;s treatment of their employees.
</p>
<h2>Four factors</h2>
<p>
	The main four factors in influencing work behaviour are believed to be job performance, organizational citizenship, absenteeism, and turnover (Carpenter, Taylor, &amp; Erdogan, 2010).
	The first two of these factors correlate to positive behaviour, while the final two correlate to negative behaviour.
</p>
<h3>Job performance</h3>
<p>
	Job performance is the extent to which an employee fulfils the criteria laid out by their job requirements.
	It could be measured in quantity, quantity, accuracy, speed, or effectiveness of something, such as units produced or tasks completed.
	When people are performing well in their job, they have a more positive attitude, which leads to more positive behaviours.
</p>
<h3>Organizational citizenship</h3>
<p>
	Organizational citizenship is the characteristic displayed when someone goes out of their way to help their organization, going above and beyond what is required of them.
	This often involves performing small extra tasks that make the lives and jobs of coworkers easier.
	It can also involve helping to prevent problems before they occur.
</p>
<h3>Absenteeism</h3>
<p>
	Absenteeism is the act of not showing up for work when scheduled to be there.
	It causes numerous problems for businesses, as they either have to find someone to fill the position of the missing worker or they have to manage to keep everything running while understaffed.
	This could be caused by health issues and/or emergencies, but could also be caused by laziness and/or forgetting to even come in.
</p>
<h3>Turnover</h3>
<p>
	Turnover is the rate at which employees leave a company.
	If workers are constantly leaving and needing to be replaced, a lot of resources are wasted on training new workers to fill the shoes of the old ones.
	This leads to a productivity loss, and can be rather costly.
	Depending on the type of company that you&apos;re in, your clients might also like to see familiar faces and have stable contacts within the organization.
	Keeping your turnover rate low can help them do that.
</p>
<h2>The SAS Institute</h2>
<h3>How they manage behavioural factors</h3>
<p>
	The SAS Institute&apos;s approach to keeping their employees in line isn&apos;t one that you see very often.
	Instead of using threats such as that of being fired, this company tries to actually address the problems.
</p>
<p>
	To keep employees happy and productive, the SAS Institute offers several perks.
	Some of these perks are geared to eliminate distractions from employees&apos; lives, raising their productivity.
	They also avoid overworking their employees.
	Well-rested workers are more productive workers.
	The SAS Institute offers employees unlimited sick leave as well, so when employees do fall ill, they&apos;ll have the time that they need in order to recover and get back to their productive selves.
	Employees are allowed to work whatever hours they want to, which sometimes results in employees taking longer breaks, for example.
	However, when these employees return, they&apos;re refreshed and ready to begin anew!
</p>
<p>
	Keeping employees happy keeps them feeling like they should give back to the company.
	The SAS Institute actually listens to their concerns, and also provides a great many perks just for working there.
	When people feel good about the situation that they&apos;re in, they are more inclined to engage in organizational citizenship activities.
</p>
<p>
	The SAS Institute offers perks such as multiple ways to exercise on-campus, keeping their employees in high physical fitness and ready to perform.
	They even offer a fully-covered, on-site medical care centre.
	With medical care available at any time, employees aren&apos;t nearly as likely to fall ill and need unscheduled time off.
	Furthermore, this health care clinic is open to the families of employees as well, so there&apos;s less need for am employee to take time off from work to care for a sick loved one.
	With other perks that keep employees loyal to the company, taking unscheduled time off simply because employees don&apos;t feel like coming in isn&apos;t likely to happen either.
</p>
<p>
	Lastly, with how well the SAS Institute cares for their employees, employees don&apos;t want to leave, so turnover isn&apos;t a problem for the company.
	Even if employees were to get curious about other companies, they know that they&apos;ll never find an employer that will treat them as well as the SAS Institute does.
	I think that more than anything, turnover is the behaviour of the main four that the SAS Institute has managed best to control using their employee-centric approach to management.
</p>
<h3>Thoughts</h3>
<p>
	As a workplace, the SAS Institute treats their employees amazingly well.
	I&apos;ve long believed that companies have a tendency to mistreat and abuse people all in the name of pushing their bottom line.
	They mistreat their employees, they mistreat their customers, and they mistreat the community at large.
	However, the SAS Institute clearly not only makes sure to avoid abusing their employees, but takes an active position to treat them very well! It pays off, too.
	Employees are far more productive in the environment built by the SAS Institute, allowing the SAS Institute to perform exceedingly well not only in terms of happiness, but also in terms of monetary gain.
	For years, I&apos;ve been saying for years that corporations don&apos;t need to abuse people because they can make more than enough money to keep their doors open and allow their owners and employers to live comfortably.
	They may not be able to make the obscene amounts of money that they make when they <strong>*do*</strong> put money above common decency, but they&apos;d be doing very well financially.
	The SAS Institute proves my past ideas incorrect though.
	Even though they treat their employees with the utmost respect and provide large amounts of costly amenities, they make <strong>*more*</strong> money because of it! Treating people decently and making vast amounts of money don&apos;t have to be mutually exclusive.
	When you treat people well, everyone prospers.
	This is what more companies should be doing.
</p>
<p>
	One of the reasons that what the SAS Institute does is even possible is likely that it&apos;s a privately-held company.
	Sadly, most human beings are inherently greedy and short-sighted.
	When a company is owned by shareholders, these shareholders will insist that costs be cut to improve the short-term bottom line, even if it means doing their own employees and customers wrong and even harming their own future bottom line.
</p>
<div class="APA_references">
	<h2>References:</h2>
	<p>
		[Authors removed at request of original publisher]. (n.d.). 2.2 Case in Point: SAS Institute Invests in Employees | Principles of Management. Retrieved from <a href="https://open.lib.umn.edu./principlesmanagement/chapter/2-2-case-in-point-sas-institute-invests-in-employees/"><code>https://open.lib.umn.edu./principlesmanagement/chapter/2-2-case-in-point-sas-institute-invests-in-employees/</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Carpenter, M., Taylor, B., Erdogan, B. (2010). Principles of Management. Nyack, NY: Flat World Knowledge. Retrieved from <a href="http://my.uopeople.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=96260"><code>http://my.uopeople.edu/mod/resource/view.php?id=96260</code></a>
	</p>
	<p>
		Crowley, M. C. (2013, January 22). How SAS Became The World&apos;s Best Place To Work | Fast Company | Business + Innovation. Retrieved from <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com./3004953/how-sas-became-worlds-best-place-work"><code>https://www.fastcompany.com./3004953/how-sas-became-worlds-best-place-work</code></a>
	</p>
</div>
END
);
